The so-called miraculous economic development in the southern half of the Korean peninsula has transformed from basically an agrarian economy to that of a major industrial power in a very short time period, and it is now considered one of a dozen or so o industrialized countries in the world. However, there has been little careful analysis, especially by Western scholars, of the heritage of the Korean economy in the traditional and transitional periods from which it launched into a modern phenomenal eonomic success. One of the major weaknesses of a few studies abroad evaluating the Korean economy between 1876 and 1945 often has been the one-sidedness. The time has come to assess and reassess Korea's heritage of economic transformation fairly and obectively with an open mind by a Korean scholar who has been educated and held his professional career abroad. This book is a study of transformation of the Korean economy from the time of the opening of the hermit kingdom in...
